Felix, who heard neither his sister’s blessing nor the expression of the affection she bore him, passed on with hasty steps through the fields.  He had not gone far, however, when he saw his brother walking towards him; his arms folded, and his eyes almost hidden by his heavy brows; sullen ferocity was in his looks, and his voice, as he addressed him, was hollow with suppressed rage.

“So,” said he, “you will ruin yourself!  Go back home, Felix.”

“For God’s sake, Hugh, let me alone, let me pass.”

“You will go?” said the other.

“I will, Hugh.”

“Then may bad luck go with you, if you do.  I order you to stay at home, I say.”

“Mind your own business, Hugh, and I’ll mind mine,” was the only reply given him.

Felix walked on by making a small circuit out of the direct path, for he was anxious not only to proceed quickly, as his time was limited, but above all things, to avoid a collision with his brother.

[Illustration:  PAGE 75—­ Felix fell forward in an instant]

The characteristic fury of the latter shot out in a burst that resembled momentary madness as much as rage.  “Is that my answer?” he shouted, in the hoarse, quivering accents of passion; and with the rapid energy of the dark impulse which guided him, he snatched up a stone from a ditch, and flung it at his brother, whose back was towards him.  Felix fell forward in an instant, but betrayed after his fall no symptoms of motion—­the stillness of apparent death was in every limb.  Hugh, after the blow had been given, stood rooted to the earth, and looked as if the demon which possessed him had fled the moment the fearful act had been committed.  His now bloodless lips quivered, his frame became relaxed, and the wild tremor of horrible apprehension shook him from limb to limb.  Immediately a fearful cry was heard far over the field’s, and the words—­“Oh! yeah! yeah, yeah, Felix, my brother, agra, can’t you spake to me?” struck upon the heart of Maura and the servant-men, with a feeling of dismay, deep and deadly.

“O God!” she exclaimed, with clasped hands and upturned eyes, “O God! my boy, my boy—­Felix, Felix, what has happened to you?”

Again the agonized cry of the brother was heard loud and frantic.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, Felix, are you dead? brother, agra, can’t you speak to me?”

With rapid steps they rushed to the spot; but, ah! what a scene was there to blast their sight and sear the brain of his sister, and indeed of all who could look upon it.  The young bridegroom smote down when his foot was on the very threshold of happiness, and by the hand of a brother?

Hugh, in the mean time, had turned up Felix from the prone posture in which he lay, with a hope—­a frenzied, a desperate hope of ascertaining whether or not life was extinct.  In this position the stricken boy was lying, his brother, like a maniac, standing over him, when Maura and the servants arrived.  One glance, a shudder, then a long ghastly gaze at Hugh, and she sank down beside the insensible victim of his fury.